


Strangely Easy to Mistake

by treaddelicately



Series: Marvel Fluff Bingo [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AIDA/Ophelia is the bad guy you guys, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Eventual Romance, F/M, Leo Fitz is Holden Radcliffe's Son, Road Trips, Stardust AU, a hint of adventure, and Bobbi is an even more badass Yvaine, and a whole lot of fluff, in which Fitz is a much less suave Tristan Thorn, purely platonic Fitzsimmons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29705847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treaddelicately/pseuds/treaddelicately
Summary: This story is about a boy who didn’t believe in magic, a boy who never looked twice at the sky.This story is about a boy and a star, and it begins with a promise.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Bobbi Morse
Series: Marvel Fluff Bingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146551
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Strangely Easy to Mistake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazyfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/gifts).



> I'm gonna be real with all of you, I only saw Stardust for the first time a few weeks ago and I've been obsessed ever since. Everything about it is so fluffy and wonderful and from the minute I watched it, I texted @myracingthoughts to tell her that it would be a perfect Fitzbobbi story. This, of course, is the result. She also beta read for me and cheered me on while I struggled, like the star she truly is.
> 
> For Al, who requested this specifically once I coughed up the premise, even though they've never even seen Stardust!!
> 
> This fic fits the **road trip** square for my Marvel Fluff Bingo, even though it's a rather unorthodox road trip.

Once upon a time, in an ordinary village full of ordinary people, lived a girl who loved the stars.

Bedridden and curious, she stared wondrously at the sky every night and dreamed of what it would be like to live among them. Past the clouds, hung in the endless expanse of space to glow for everyone to see. The girl thought it must be magic, the way they shined so brightly, like enchanting beacons of hope.

She had heard tales of magic before, of course, but only that it appeared outside the wall that surrounded her village. Strange stories of witches, protective amulets, and animals that would speak if you asked them something worthwhile. 

Surely if that sort of magic existed on the ground, the girl reasoned to herself, it must have come from somewhere?

Jemma Simmons was right, of course. Magic _did_ come from the sky, and the stars were not at all what they appeared to be.

But this story isn’t about Jemma Simmons. This story is about her dearest friend, a boy who would have done anything to make her smile. A boy who didn’t believe in magic or any of the tales that ran through their village like wind, who never looked twice at the sky. 

This story is about a boy and a star, and it begins with a promise.

* * *

“You’re not cold?”

“I’ve already said I’m not, Jemma.”

“But you’re hardly wearing enough layers, and I can see your breath—”

“Jemma,” Fitz sighed fondly. “I’m plenty warm, alright? Drink your tea.”

He _was_ cold, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. Not when she’d been hounding him about his jacket ever since they’d come outside.

The exertion of moving her bed to the lawn had been enough to keep him warm for a time, but now Fitz was wishing he’d brought an extra blanket or two. When Jemma wasn’t looking, he cupped his hands around his mouth and blew on them to ease the stiffness in his fingers.

An obvious answer to his discomfort would be to head back inside, but that wasn’t truly an option. Not when this was the bright spot in Jemma’s day — or, more accurately, her night. Wheeling her outside to stare at the sky for an hour or so was the one thing that made her illness bearable, and if he had to endure a little chill for that to happen, so be it.

“How was your shift at the shop?” Jemma asked between sips. “And don’t say—”

“—dreadful,” Fitz finished with a grin. “Why do you even ask?”

“It’s polite! Besides, I live vicariously through you, you know. At the very least, you could pass along the exciting parts of your day.”

He barely contained a snort. Exciting?

Fitz had lived in their tiny neighborhood for his whole life without one single exciting thing happening. Days passed in an endless rotation of work in his father’s shop, mindless gossip from the villagers, and the only truly welcome portion of it all — spending time with Jemma.

They’d bonded in primary school over a mutual curiosity about the world. While Fitz was fascinated with taking things apart and putting them back together again, Jemma fretted over the sky above and the things that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Their bond had only deepened when she became confined to her bed, as he’d been the only person who cared to continue visiting when she didn’t return to school.

“Unless you count a bag of spilled beans as exciting…”

“Oh, Fitz,” Jemma sighed. “One day, something wonderful will happen here. You’ll see.”

He was inclined to disagree with her, but he didn’t want to spoil the mood. Instead, he distracted her with a story about his father singeing his fingertips while working on his latest invention. Jemma laughed so hard when he described his dancing and howling in pain that she had to wipe tears from her eyes, and for a time everything felt normal.

“Oh, wow,” Jemma gasped a little while later. “Look!”

Her finger jutted upwards and he nearly rolled his eyes, preparing himself for another lecture on this constellation or that and whether it seemed closer than usual. But when he looked, he saw something only spoken about in hushed whispers before.

A bright light streaked across the sky, burning brighter blue at one end as it traveled. Further down it went until it disappeared below the trees.

“Did you see that?” Jemma asked. “Please tell me you saw it as well.”

Fitz felt himself nod. “I did,” he said with a sense of awe.

A star had fallen.

“It was so beautiful,” she sighed. “I bet it’s even more beautiful up close. Do you think it would be hot to the touch? What am I saying, of course it would be…”

Jemma’s rambling continued for some time while Fitz stared off into the distance. The light from the star hadn’t disappeared entirely, leaving a trail in the horizon as though leading his gaze to where it had landed. As though it wanted him to see.

Which was utterly ridiculous.

“Simmons, you know it’s probably just a rock, don’t you?”

She took a moment to backtrack from the path of wonder her mind had taken her down. When she’d sussed out the question he’d asked, she frowned. “Don’t you start.”

“I just don’t see how it can be _magical_. If there were truly magic around here, don’t you think we’d know it?”

They’d had the argument a thousand times. Jemma’s fanciful ideas about the universe compared to his more realistic and grounded approach to things. It was just difficult for him to see how witches and spells and healing herbs could coexist in a place so droll and monotonous. 

“It landed outside the wall. You know that’s where all the magic is!”

Fitz pulled a face. “No one’s allowed over the wall because it’s dangerous. You know that.”

“That’s just what they tell everyone,” Jemma protested. “What if it’s true? What if there really is a star waiting over there?”

She sounded so convinced that he almost felt sorry for her. Amused grin turning up the corners of his mouth, Fitz reached over for her hand. She slipped it out from under her sleeve, her fingers curling around his.

“I wish, for your sake, that it were true,” he said gently. “But it’s not, Jemma. This, here? This is what we have.”

Jemma leveled a look at him, full of spite and determination. “I won’t believe that. There has to be more to the world than just what’s here in River’s End, Fitz.”

The front door to the house opened with a telltale creak, silencing the rest of the argument.

“Time to come inside, sweetheart,” Jemma’s father called out. “You’ve stayed out far too long in the cold.”

“A few more minutes?” she asked hopefully, but he shook his head.

Fitz climbed off the tree stump he’d been using as a seat, grateful for the reprieve from the conversation. “Do you need help getting her inside, sir?”

“No, no.” Mr. Simmons waved his hand dismissively, already bending over to pull out the wheels for Jemma’s bed. “You run along home, Leo. Your father will be wondering where you are.”

“Remember what I said, Fitz,” Jemma blurted out. Always one to want the last word. “I know it’s out there.”

Unable to think of a proper response, he simply bid them goodnight, his mind still racing the entire walk home.

* * *

When he arrived home, all the lights had already been extinguished save for one lamp at the kitchen table. Fitz rolled his eyes and shook his father awake, nudging him away from the latest pile of scraps he’d taken to tinkering with to urge him towards bed.

Jemma’s words and the streak of light in the sky lingered in his mind as he trudged up the stairs to his own room.

There was no chance that she was actually right, of course. Fitz believed in the things that he could see and feel with his own two hands, and nothing he’d ever encountered had lent itself to the existence of any sort of magic. Science, absolutely. Science and invention he believed in with everything he was, but there was hardly science behind a star falling from the heavens.

Still, the idea lingered. It itched under his skin uncomfortably until it sent him reaching under his bed for the box he kept to look through when he couldn’t sleep.

A few drawings from his father lay on top, scraps of paper that he’d scribbled down ideas for inventions on. Fitz had always wanted to save them to see if he could bring one to life one day. Underneath the drawings were a few books, gifts he’d been given from Jemma over the years, a rolled-up sheet of parchment, and a black candle.

Fitz pulled out the scroll and untied the twine around it carefully, being as gentle as possible. After nineteen years of reading it over and over, he was still frightened that the next time he unrolled it would be the time he damaged it beyond repair.

His mother’s handwriting greeted him like an old friend, well-worn and beautiful as ever.

 _Leopold_ , it said.

He could recite her last words to him from memory if anyone had asked. How she’d apologized that he had to grow up without a mother, her love for him, her clear enthusiasm for the world she inhabited, and her sadness that they hadn’t been able to share it. 

_You’ll do great things, my little love, but not if you stay still. When you are ready, close your eyes and think of anywhere in the world you’d like to be. The candle will take you there._

_Love, your mother._

Fitz swallowed hard as he rolled the parchment back up. He set it back in the box and picked up the candle.

For something that was so obviously meant to bring him comfort, it felt like a bedtime story, a childish fantasy of a boy he could never be. One who traveled by magical candle and picked up fallen stars and became a man along the way. Fantastic and extraordinary and utterly absurd.

Still, Jemma’s words echoed in his ears. If she wanted to insist on magic existing, he supposed there was only one way to prove her wrong. 

He very nearly hesitated when he lit the match, but pragmatism took over long enough for him to put it to the wick. He closed his eyes as it lit and thought of the star falling behind the trees, wondering where it might have landed, and that was when everything went sideways.

Like an explosion without the noise, the entirety of Fitz’s bedroom was engulfed in a bright light that burned even behind his eyelids. He opened his mouth to shout, but a tug behind his bellybutton pulled the sound from his throat and then he was swallowed whole with the rest of the light.

A moment later, Fitz tumbled out of the disorienting flame and landed on the ground.

The candle flew from his hand as he fought to brace himself, rolling several feet away while pain raced up his kneecaps from the harsh landing. He sputtered, choking on the dust that had kicked up around him and trying to see through the cloud to discern just where it was that he’d ended up.

Moonlight spilled down around him, illuminating the crater that Fitz found himself sitting in the middle of. He pieced it together quickly, between the hole in the earth and the last thought he’d had before he lit the candle.

The star. He’d traveled to the star.

Jemma was _right_. Oh, he was never going to hear the end of it.

Ignoring the pain in his hands and knees, Fitz dragged himself to his feet and began looking around frantically. There was no telling what a star looked like, not exactly, but he was willing to bet that he’d recognize it if he saw it.

A glint of silver caught his eye and his heart leaped into his throat, but then it shimmered and he realized it wasn’t a star.

It was a girl.

“Oh! Hello,” he called out to her. “You haven’t seen a star around here, have you?”

The girl turned her head to look at him with wide eyes. He wasn’t sure which was brighter, the silvery sheen of her dress or the cascade of blonde hair down her back. 

“You’re quite funny, are you?”

“What?” Fitz blinked, startled. “I’m only asking a question. You see, a star fell in this direction, and judging by this crater I’d say it was here not too long ago…”

He hoped that he hadn’t missed it. If he’d traveled all this way and proved Jemma’s theories only to return without any proof, he’d never forgive himself.

“Oh, it’s here,” the girl replied, annoyance laced through her tone as she crossed her arms. “And quite annoyed, too.”

He stepped closer, frowning in confusion as he took another look. “Stars can’t be annoyed, that’s ridiculous.”

“Well, this one is. You’d be annoyed too, if you were minding your own business and someone knocked you out of the sky.”

“You’re having a laugh. Come on, you must have the star. Where is it?”

“I’m not ‘having a laugh’,” The girl imitated in a near-perfect rendition of his accent, her hands gesturing up and down her body. “I’m a star. My name’s Bobbi.”

Fitz arched an eyebrow, looking her up and down. “Bobbi doesn’t sound like the name of a star.”

“What are you, an astronomer?” she shot back. “Because you certainly don’t look like one.”

“Hey, there’s no need to be rude!”

She threw her hands up. “You’re the one calling me a liar!”

The whole thing was making Fitz’s head spin. He’d begun the night as he would have any other and now here he was, traveling through candlelight and arguing with a woman who claimed to be a star.

He could hardly come up with another explanation for her standing around in the middle of a forest like this, though. Even less of one for the impossible sheen to her hair, the almost ethereal quality to her movements as she walked around him in a circle.

“And who are you, anyway? How did you get here?” Bobbi demanded. “What do you want with me?”

“My name’s Leo Fitz. And I got here with—” he stopped to locate the dropped candle a few feet away, scooping it up to show her. “—with this. I was thinking of the star when I lit it.”

Bobbi stared at the candle in his hand like she was afraid of it. “That’s a Babylon candle. How did you get one of those?”

“It was a gift,” Fitz explained, a bit defensively. 

“Are you a witch?” 

“What? No! Look, I didn’t even think it would work. I thought all of this was nonsense.”

“All of what?”

Well, _everything_ was the short answer. So he shrugged. “Magic, of course.”

Bobbi let out a little hysterical laugh, stopping her pacing to level another look at him when it was clear that he wasn’t kidding.

“Leo, do you even realize where you are?”

It was strange, being called by his first name, but he was too distracted to correct her.

“Beyond the wall,” he said honestly. “That’s all I know.”

“We’re in the kingdom of Darkhold. It holds all the magic in this world, that’s why there’s a wall separating it from your village.”

Fitz stared from her to the candle in his hand and then back. “So then this…”

“That,” Bobbi said, pointing. “Came from Darkhold. Whoever you got it from was magical.”

Not only did magic exist, but now his mother was part of this strange world? Everything Fitz knew, or thought he knew, felt like it had been upended and then lobbed away to a place he couldn’t reach. Rather than struggle with the implications, he took a breath and decided to work on one problem at a time.

“Well, I don’t intend to stay. I want to get back to River’s End, and I’d like you to come with me.”

Bobbi looked startled. “I can’t come home with you. Don’t you understand? I’m a star, I belong up there.”

She pointed at the sky, but there was something else on her face he couldn’t quite nail down. Some fear she had about being on solid ground that she didn’t care to disclose.

“Look, I can put you back,” he told her. “Once we go see Jemma.”

“Who’s Jemma?”

“My best friend. She’s the whole reason I even ended up here. She’s always wanted to see a star, and even if I thought this would work, I assumed it would be a lump of rock, not…” Fitz cleared his throat awkwardly. “Not you.”

Bobbi resumed her pacing, her lips pursed as she considered it. “And how are you going to get me back in the sky?”

“With this, of course.” He held up the candle. “It can take you wherever you want to go.”

The sky seemed like a tall order, but after everything he’d seen so far, he was willing to chance it.

She was quiet for a moment. Fitz waited for her to mull it over, watching her shimmer in the moonlight with as much patience as he could muster. 

“That’s all you want from me? Just to see your friend?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Well… yes. I don’t know what else I could do with a star, after all.”

Something in her posture relaxed then, a little more of her defenses coming down as she nodded. “Alright, then. I’ll go meet your friend. If you _promise_ to let me go home afterwards.”

Fitz tucked the candle in his pocket and offered his hand. “I promise, Bobbi.”

“This is probably a bad idea,” she muttered as she shook it. “But we better start walking.”

“Walking?” His voice, shrill even to his own ears, bounced off the walls of the crater and echoed back at him. “Who said anything about walking? That’s what the candle’s for.”

Bobbi shook her head firmly. “There was hardly enough left for one more use, Leo. If you’re going to use it to get me home, we can’t light it until it’s time to send me home.”

Fitz thought of the distance between the crater and the wall, and the long, arduous journey they had ahead of them. No food, no drink, and a very small amount of money tucked away in his pocket. His father wouldn’t even know where he’d gone and if his quick calculations were correct, it was going to take more than a week for them to get back to River’s End.

“Oh, alright,” he grumbled. “Come on, then.”

Jemma was going to owe him the biggest thank you in existence when all of this was over.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you feel like leaving a kudos or a comment, just know that I'm air hugging you from afar. I plan to update this fic once weekly, but I'm playing it fast and loose with actual day updates so I don't burn myself out. Hope to see you next week!


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